The Vinyl Children Of Women

That led her to immerse herself for five years in the Reborn subculture, a growing group, almost exclusively women, who collect shockingly lifelike handmade dolls of newborn babies. Many of them treat the dolls as if they were real members of their families — taking them shopping and out to restaurants.

“Many of them have a very, very strong genetic makeup to nurture and they love babies,” Ms. Martinez said. “And many are mothers. A lot of people think these are people who can’t have children. Some are, but many of them have children and love the baby stage of nurturing. They can love a baby, they can nurture it in a permanent way.”

According to the photographer, Rebecca Martinez, most of the women who do this are conservative Christians. There is a Reborn subculture of women whose babies have died, who commission replicas (“portrait babies”) of their dead infant. I’ve spent some time tonight looking at websites showcasing dead babies and their posthumous vinyl doppelgangers. Maybe it’s just me, but this is nightmarish.

You’ve got to click on that link to see these pictures. It’s unnerving. Check out photo No. 11, of a “baby” in distress, in a hospital incubator. Who would want that? Bizarre. No doubt creating these things requires great skill. But where does the desire among grown women to nurture ultra-realistic plastic baby dolls come from? Trauma? I don’t want to make fun of this, because I’d guess that there’s some seriously deep pain within a lot of these women. Still, it’s incredibly odd. I find myself in a condition that’s unfamiliar: speechless.

One thing–when I made the comment about the women choosing to help with real children, I was noting that the average age of the women in the photo essay seemed to be 55-65 and older. Perhaps they were never allowed to grieve properly over miscarriages, but I think that most of them would be years away from any recent losses, which is why the doll thing seems so strange.

Then again, perhaps their own children adamantly don’t want children of their own, and their arms are aching for the grandchildren they’ll never have.

John said: So for those reasons, even though it is as close to impossible as anything is in this world that I’ll ever be in a position where I’d be responsible for making that decision, my preference would be to have fetal remains incinerated as medical waste and later recognize the loss with a small memorial headstone.

You apparently have not considered something. A lot of women miscarry at home where any thought of incineration is out of the question. So how do you take the remains to the hospital or elsewhere to be incinerated? You have to put it in some kind of container, a jar is one of them. There are also other reasons why some people might need to have genetic testing done to the remains. Then you also have to take the remains to the hospital. A very difficult experience, but it certainly doesn’t make the women who take the remains of their fetuses to the hospital in a jar some kind of sickos. In many circumstances, that’s what needs to be done.

Siarlys Jenkins says:Heather, I want to say this as gently as possible… …perhaps everyone you know considers that the APA can never be wrong… …but there are quite a lot of us who suspect that it often is.

Siarlys, I want to say this as gently as possible, the above doesn’t change the fact that there are millions and millions of people who think that homosexuality is normal, based in part because the APA said so. Not every comment is about you.

I think I responded quickly and emotionally. I agree with you that many of the women in question would benefit from serving others; service usually is wonderful medicine.

I was stuck in my own experiences and got defensive. A lot of people pressured me to get over it via good works or exercise or whatnot after some losses. Especially after my son died. The strangest thing I learned about death was how much other humans needed me to hide my suffering from them–they wanted me to work with them on “fixing it” so there would be no messy grief for them to witness.

Death scares people; I think suffering scares them even more. And these older ladies who tote eerily lifelike dollies around do bear an uncanny resemblance to suffering.

John–thanks for your respectful reply. I felt the same as you before my first loss. The nurse at the hospital urged us to dress our son after his death, and have pictures taken of him and of us holding him. I thought it was too painful at the time, but those photos are precious to me now, and are the first non-living things I’d grab if my house caught fire.